Google has been developing a new open source OS called "Fuchsia" for smartphones, tablets and other devices, which could be unveiled as early as this summer. Little has been revealed about the new OS since it first came to light last year. However, new details that surfaced last week have been making the rounds. Fuchsia apparently will move Google away from its long association with Linux.

Gender bias affects contributions to the open source community, according to a paper published Monday. Female programmers' suggestions for code changes in open source projects -- called "pull requests" -- were accepted more often than those of their male counterparts when gender was unspecified. However, that changed when the gender of a pull request's author could be identified.

Even if you're a newcomer to Linux, you've probably figured out that it is not a single, monolithic operating system, but a constellation of projects. The different "stars" in this constellation take the form of "distributions," or "distros." Each offers its own take on the Linux model. To gain an appreciation of the plethora of Linux options, it helps to understand how it started out.

A new strain of malware targeting Linux systems, dubbed "Linux/Shishiga," could morph into a dangerous security threat. Eset disclosed the threat, which represents a new Lua family unrelated to previously seen LuaBot malware. Linux/Shishiga uses four protocols -- SSH, Telnet, HTTP and BitTorrent -- and Lua scripts for modularity, wrote Detection Engineer Michal Malik and Eset researchers.

"What can it do that Windows can't?" That is the first question many people ask when considering Linux for their desktop. While the open source philosophy that underpins Linux is a good enough draw for some, others want to know just how different its look, feel and functionality can get. To a degree, that depends on whether you choose a desktop environment or a window manager.

Docker this week introduced two new projects at DockerCon with an eye to helping operating system vendors, software creators and in-house tinkerers create container-native OSes and container-based systems. The projects are based on a new model for cross-ecosystem collaboration and the advancement of containerized software. Both projects aim to help users adopt container technology.

The ability to run Android apps natively in a Linux desktop environment is a step closer to realization, thanks to Anbox, a new open source project. Simon Fels, lead software engineer at Canonical, last week debuted a pre-alpha release of the Anbox platform, which he has been working on independently since 2015. There were quite a few problems to solve on the way to a working version, he said.

Canonical's long and winding quest for a unified user experience came to a sudden halt on Wednesday, as founder Mark Shuttleworth announced the firm's decision to stop investing in its struggling Unity8 shell and revert to Gnome. The 6-year-old Unity plan was to create a user interface that could work on various types of devices, ranging from a mobile phone to a personal computer or tablet.

Who's afraid of the Linux terminal? Not you, if you've learned the basics of navigating your system. But how will these newly acquired skills help improve your computing life? To give you a sense of the terminal's everyday usefulness, here are some examples of tasks the terminal is well-disposed to handle. To start with, system administration is much more straightforward on the terminal.

In a move that caps off its gradual embrace of open source in a bear hug, Microsoft last week announced that it would shutter its nearly 11-year-old CodePlex project site and migrate its library of work to GitHub. The company has been forced to deal with a couple of major issues, such as a 2015 spam epidemic and a substantial decrease in usage, which in part prompted the move.

The Cloud Foundry Foundation has announced the launch of a worldwide cloud-native developer certification initiative. The foundation created the program to fill the widening gap of trained programmers for cloud apps and services. The Linux Foundation -- which has trained and certified more developers on open source software than any organization in the world -- will provide the instruction.

Google on Tuesday unveiled a developer preview of the latest version of its mobile operating system, code named "Android O." The new OS is designed to improve on battery life and interactive performance of devices, according to Dave Burke, vice president of engineering, Android, at Google. The new release puts automatic limits on what applications do in the background in three areas.

If you've begun to tinker with your desktop Linux terminal, you may be ready to take a deeper dive. You're no longer put off by references to "terminal," "command line" or "shell," and you have a grasp of how files are organized. You can distinguish between a command, an option and an argument. You've begun navigating your system. Now what? File manipulation lies at the heart of Linux.

Google on Thursday announced Guetzli, a new contribution to its evolving set of tools for the open source community. Guetzli is an encoder that allows JPEG files to be compressed as much as 35 percent, resulting in much faster Web page loading. "Guetzli," which means "cookie" in Swiss German, allows users to create smaller JPEG images.

Linux Academy, an online training platform for the Linux OS and cloud computing, has announced a public beta rollout of its Cloud Assessments platform, designed to let large enterprise firms train and assess their IT workers and prospective job candidates. The academy offers training on a variety of cloud-based platforms, including Amazon Web Services, Open Stack, DevOps, Azure and others.

Once you have a sense of the vast potential of Linux, you may be eager to experience it for yourself. Given the complexity of modern operating systems, it can be hard to know where to start. As with many things, computers can be better understood through a breakdown of their evolution and operation. The terminal is not only where computers began, but also where their real power still resides.

Google has released its E2EMail encryption code to open source as a way of pushing development of the technology. "Google has been criticized over the amount of time and seeming lack of progress it has made in E2EMail encryption, so open sourcing the code could help the project proceed more quickly," said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT. That will not stop critics, though, he added.

Raspberry Pi turned 5 years old on Tuesday, and to mark the occasion, the foundation announced a new member of the family, the Raspberry Pi Zero W, and a case to go with it. Raspberry Pi Zero W adds wireless LAN and Bluetooth capabilities to tiny computer's growing list of capabilities. Priced at just $10, the device is affordable for anyone who wants to take the Pi for a test drive.

After I resolved to adopt Linux, my confidence grew slowly but surely. Security-oriented considerations were compelling enough to convince me to switch, but I soon discovered many more advantages to the Linux desktop. For those still unsure about making the transition, or those who have done so but may not know everything their system can do, I'll showcase here some of the Linux desktop's advantages.

SnapRoute, a developer of open source networking software, announced that it has raised $25 million in Series A financing led by Norwest Venture Partners with new support from AT&T and Microsoft Ventures. SnapRoute, founded by CEO Jason Forrester and other former Apple engineers, plans to use the funding to speed up the development of open source networking software for Fortune 500 firms.

If asked, my friends could readily attest to my profound passion for Linux, so it might surprise you to know that hardly two years ago, I barely knew what Linux was, let alone had any earnest interest in switching from Windows. Although a shift as dramatic as this may seem astonishing when considered in hindsight, analyzing my path from one push or influence to the next paints a more telling picture.

The Document Foundation on Wednesday announced the general availability of LibreOffice 5.3, one of the office suite's most feature-rich upgrades since 2010, when it forked from OpenOffice at version 3.3. Dubbed "5.3 Fresh," this latest release takes the development of LibreOffice in a new direction with a focus on updating the user experience, according to Italo Vignoli of the Document Foundation.

Wine developers have announced the release of stable version Wine 2.0. The release brings many fixes and some new functionality, along with a major change in future release schedules. The devs have tweaked Wine's ability to run Windows programs within the Linux operating system in this release, which is the culmination of more than a year of effort. It includes some 6,600 individual changes.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation on Monday launched its long-awaited industrial strength Compute Module 3. The latest version of the low-cost Raspberry Pi computer, it is designed for more robust manufacturing and technical demand uses than prior versions, which target consumer and basic business needs. The idea behind the new module is to provide a cost-effective way to produce customized products.

Docker on Wednesday announced that it will spin out containerd, a key component of its Docker Engine, for open source use. Containerd will provide an open, stable and extensible base for building non-Docker products and container solutions, the company said. Some of the top cloud providers have committed to making contributions to the project, giving it instant credibility within the community.

Linus Torvalds this weekend announced Linux 4.9, which offers a number of significant upgrades to the kernel. "I'm pretty sure this is the biggest release we've ever had, at least in terms of commits," Torvalds wrote. "If you look at the number of lines changed, we've had bigger releases in the past but they've tended to be due to specific issues."

Can a new smartwatch operating system based on Linux breathe some new life into the smart wearables market? Florent Revest hopes so. Revest, a French computer science student, on Wednesday announced the alpha release of AsteroidOS, an open source operating system that will run on several Android smartwatch models. Revest has been working on his OS for two years.

Two leaders in the field of artificial intelligence have announced that they're open-sourcing their AI platforms. After investing in building rich simulated environments to serve as laboratories for AI research, Google's DeepMind Lab said it would open the platform for the broader research community's use. DeepMind has "only barely scratched the surface of what is possible," the team said.

The developers of The Final Station, recognizing the growing market for the post-apocalyptic train ride in the open source community, have made their hot-selling title available for the Linux OS. The indie game, which Do My Best Games and TinyBuild launched for PC, Mac, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 this summer, became available for Linux last week.

While not quite at the level of a parting of the waters, the news that Microsoft has joined The Linux Foundation may seem miraculous to those aware of the past enmity between the company and the open source community. Microsoft has joined The Linux Foundation as a platinum member, it announced Wednesday at its Microsoft Connect conference in New York.